Update: After this article was published, Bluesky restored Kabas’ post and told 404 Media the following: “This was a case of our moderators applying the policy for non-consensual AI content strictly. After re-evaluating the newsworthy context, the moderation team is reinstating those posts.”
Bluesky deleted a viral, AI-generated protest video in which Donald Trump is sucking on Elon Musk’s toes because its moderators said it was “non-consensual explicit material.” The video was broadcast on televisions inside the office Housing and Urban Development earlier this week, and quickly went viral on Bluesky and Twitter.
Independent journalist Marisa Kabas obtained a video from a government employee and posted it on Bluesky, where it went viral. Tuesday night, Bluesky moderators deleted the video because they said it was “non-consensual explicit material.”
Other Bluesky users said that versions of the video they uploaded were also deleted, though it is still possible to find the video on the platform.
Technically speaking, the AI video of Trump sucking Musk’s toes, which had the words “LONG LIVE THE REAL KING” shown on top of it, is a nonconsensual AI-generated video, because Trump and Musk did not agree to it. But social media platform content moderation policies have always had carve outs that allow for the criticism of powerful people, especially the world’s richest man and the literal president of the United States.
For example, we once obtained Facebook’s internal rules about sexual content for content moderators, which included broad carveouts to allow for sexual content that criticized public figures and politicians. The First Amendment, which does not apply to social media companies but is relevant considering that Bluesky told Kabas she could not use the platform to “break the law,” has essentially unlimited protection for criticizing public figures in the way this video is doing.
Content moderation has been one of Bluesky’s growing pains over the last few months. The platform has millions of users but only a few dozen employees, meaning that perfect content moderation is impossible, and a lot of it necessarily needs to be automated. This is going to lead to mistakes. But the video Kabas posted was one of the most popular posts on the platform earlier this week and resulted in a national conversation about the protest. Deleting it—whether accidentally or because its moderation rules are so strict as to not allow for this type of reporting on a protest against the President of the United States—is a problem.
You clearly never were the victim back in those days. Neither do you realize this approach doesn’t work on the modern web even in the slightest, unless you want the basics of both enlightenment and therefore science and democracy crumbling down even faster.
Anarchism is never an answer, it’s usually willful ignorance about there being any problems.
Pretty much everyone used anonymous handles, so it was hard to be a victim, and very easy to disregard junk we didn’t like.
I’m sensing strong overtones of a victim complex and excessive catastrophizing. You know they’re images & words on a screen, right?
Enlightenment gives us freedom of expression. It seems uninformed & backward to assume faceless moderators of some private organization are the defenders of enlightenment, freedom, & democracy (especially while arguing against too much freedom). Centralized moderation & curation algorithms got us filter bubbles & echo chambers personalizing the information people consume & distorting their perceptions. It feeds people the information they want to see (often polarizing them with extremist ideas), keeping users engaged on the platform so it continues earning a steady stream of ad revenue. Rather than defend enlightened principles of society, moderators serve their own interests, which aren’t necessarily in alignment with anything noble.
Internet anarchy is a pretty good answer.
AnCaps drive me nuts. They want to dismantle democratic institutions while simultaneously licking the boots of unelected institutions.
I guess I don’t really consider AnCaps to be Anarchists because Anarchy is generally leftist philosophy. Traditional anarchy is like small government socialism: empowered local unions and city governments.
You know what’s funny about Stalinism that everyone forgets about?
Its structures were similar to what you describe on the lower level. Districts and factories and such all had their councils (soviet means council), from which representatives were elected to councils of the upper level. They still were pretty despotic most of that period, because crowd rule leads to despotism.
Democracy shouldn’t be made too small and too unavoidable. In some sense an imagined hillbilly village is democratic with that problem.
Point being that this didn’t look much like some people imagine anarchy.
Anyway, ancaps are not particularly attached to the name, and themselves prefer the words “voluntarism” and “agorism” and a few others. But it’s one of the most common names for the ideology.
People against ancaps usually only disagree with them in the way institutions are being dismantled.
In any case looking through the eyes of an ancap you might get valuable insights, and this thought should be obvious for an intelligent person of any school in regards to any other.
This isn’t anarchism, as described. Anarchism, like actual anarchism, is the only likely solution, imo. No gods, no masters, no idols.
A perfect breeding ground for growing localized power structures that aren’t bound to anything holding them back. A power vacuum will always fill itself. To gain control over it as a society (i.e. democracy) is one of the greatest achievements of mankind. We have to keep improving it (by reforming how economical powers can or can not exercise power or grow), not moving to something that’s so obviously disregarding how power structures form and behave in human societies.
Ok, read up a little about anarchism, and come back to the discussion. I can provide a starter primer, if you like.
The only control is the ruling class over the working class. I don’t think that’s a great achievement.
Solution involves answers where to get energy to dig in the gods, masters and idols. They are well-armed and those seeking solutions are not.